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The European Central Bank’s contingency move to purchase €16.5bn ($20.4bn) of bonds from southern Europe and Ireland has prompted overseas holders of Greek and Portuguese debt to dump their positions.

Neil Mellor, currency strategist at the Bank of New Mellon, said that his firm’s custodial data showed a “sharp acceleration” of net sales of Greek and Portuguese debt following the ECB’s buying of debt of Club Med countries.

The ECB governing council is already split over the move to buy eurozone debt, with panel member Ewald Nowotny, Austria’s central bank chief, expressing shock over the “hysteria” in Germany about inflation pressures.

The ECB will on Tuesday kick off a “sterilisation” exercise to drain €16.5bn into one-week fixed-term deposits, in order to offset the inflationary effects of its bond-purchase programme.

The euro dived to a four-year low of $1.2234 against the dollar on Monday, before recovering partially following the ECB’s declaration of its sterlisation scheme and Greece’s affirmation that it would get the first tranche of emergency loans on Tuesday.